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NEW ENGLAND 



IN MILWAUKEE. 



PAPER READ BEFORE THE FIELD MEET OF THE WISCONSIN STATE 
HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AT THE PUBLIC MUSEUM IN MIL- 
WAUKEE, BY ELLIS B. USHER, OCTOBER 12, 1901. 



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During a recent visit to New England, with my little daugh- 
ter, who is a Badger by birthright, she was much diverted by the 
jest of a stranger who told her, when she gave her residence as 
Milwaukee, that he supposed that "all Milwaukeeans spoke only 
German," and an English lady, who sat in the next seat turned 
around and said "You must be a little English girl," and re- 
ferred to her use of certain words as evidence. This incident 
suggests the remark of the Harvard professor who says that the 
best English spoken in America will be found within a hundred 
miles of Chicago, and that other significant statement, in Bryce's 
"American Commonwealth," that "The West is the most Ameri- 
can part of America." Prof. Turner of our own state university 
has said, "The Western problem is no longer a sectional problem ; 
it is a social problem on a national scale." 

John Fiske, in his American Political Ideas, written in 1880, 
in a now very striking chapter on Anglo-Saxon "Manifest Des- 
tiny," quoted the toasts offered at an American dinner, in Paris 
where the climax came from a gentleman who said that if our 
manifest destiny was to be taken into account, he would propose 
this toast: "The United States — bounded on the north by the 
Aurora Borealis, on the south by the procession of the Equinoxes, 
on the east by the primeval Chaos, and on the west by the Day of 
Judgment." 

Milwaukee has long been known and noted as a German 
city, and the Germans have, since a very early day in its history, 
been quite able to speak for themselves. I have a very good and 
quite satisfactory knowledge of the German, as we know him. 

But I have a disposition to differ with him most in respect 
of some things of which he often feels most assured. For ex- 
ample, a certain class of Germans are prone to speak of the Pur- 
itan Yankee as the embodiment of illiberality, and to utter the 



title with an inflection not altogether melifluous. In turn, some 
of the descendants of the New England Puritans are equally 
free with their sarcasms as to "Sabbath breaking" and "beer 
drinking Germans." I do not marvel at these small passages at 
arms, but I would assign a very different reason for them, from 
that likely to be generally accepted by either party to the contro- 
versy. In my humble opinion these demonstrations are largely 
the result of likeness rather than of difference. The man who 
said that the Puritan came here "to worship God according to the 
dictates of his own conscience and to make everybody else do the 
same," was not so strangely different from the German who 
came to Wisconsin with a purpose, at the outset, of establishing 
a German colony and founding a German state. The broad 
truth is that there is great ethnological likeness between the 
German and his Puritan prototype. There was even closer re- 
semblance between the Pilgrims of the Mayflower and the later 
German immigration to Wisconsin. The Pilgrims had religious 
liberty in Holland but they did not wish to become Dutch. They 
came here from motives of patriotism rather than for religion's 
sake alone. The Puritans were intolerant, while the Pilgrims 
were more liberal. 

The monument to Faith erected at Pl3Tnouth, Mass., is sur- 
rounded at the base by the figures of Morality, Law, Education 
and Liberty. The compact made in the Mayflower is called the 
germ of our constitution, and Parson Hooker's constitution of 
the Connecticut colony was the mould in which our liberal insti- 
tutions of government were run. Eepresentative government 
finds its best models in many of JSTew England's historic exper- 
iences. But all these ideas were born in Germany. The his- 
tory of tlie movement that culminated in the Reformation, was 
the history of our own earliest struggle for liberty of opinion, 
and its hand-maiden civil rights. This idea has its most strik- 
ing exemplification in the Mississippi Valley which is at once 
the most American and the most Teiitonic section of the United 
States. 

I believe that any suitable discussion of the history of Mil- 
waukee should have this sort of a background. We should fully 
understand and appreciate that the past is common property, if 
the New England men and women, and the German men and wo- 
men of Milwaukee, are to look forward in right spirit and with 
proper assurance, to the future that is to make them all kindred, 
in blood, as well as in their historic inheritance of principle and 
purpose. 

In 1850, two years after Wisconsin was admitted to the 
Union, the state had a population of 305,391, 110,471 of which 
was of foreign birth. Milwaukee at this time had 20,061 in- 
habitants and probably about its relative proportion of foreign 
born citizens. But, by 1800, Milwaukee had 62,518 inhabitants, 
33,144, more than half of them, of foreign birth, and today, the 



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foreign born citizens who have settled here during the past fifty 
years! and their progeny, are probably 90 per cent, of the present 
iopuhition. Teutonic blood flows in the veins of at least 75 per 
Jent. of our citizens. Studies of the census of 1880, led me to 
the conclusion that there were then, in Wisconsin, not more than 
12,000 to 15,000 persons, who could claim an unmixed Ameri- 
can ancestry, reaching back to Revolutionary days. 

The beginning of Milwaukee was marked by the conjunction 
of the picturesque and the practical elements of the history of 
civilization on this continent. Solomon Juneau who was the 
first white settler, and a one-third proprietor of the town-site, 
represented the French pioneer, who was the first white mari to 
iread the pathless forests of this territory. George H. Walker, 
who came from Virginia, and Byron Kilbourne, who was o± Con- 
necticut stock, represented the practical conflict for the ^ orth- 
west territory that long waged between the New Eng and and 
- Virginia pioneers. These men owned the Milwaukee site. 

i Juneau the East side. Walker the South side, and Kilbourne the 

'^ We^tside. Kilbourne came here in 1835. He was the author ot 

^ the first code of rules for self-government ever used on this 

ground It was drawn for the regulation of squatters upon 
government lands, and the best testimony to its wisdom is, that 
it worked, successfully, and prevented disputes and contests 
Eyron Kilbourne was the third mayor of the city, m 18-48, and 
from 1846, when Solomon Juneau was the first mayor under the 
charter, to 1863, when Edw'd O'Neill was chosen, the names ot 
the mayors indicate English ancestry, and such names as Upham, 
Crocker, Prentiss, Lynde, and Chase, are all from New England 
or of New England ancestry. The first representative ot the 
Teutonic element, to be chosen mayor was the late John Black, 
but he was really a Frenchman who spoke German, and m the 
55 years of its existence, Milwaukee has had but three mayors 
of German birth or name, while fourteen or fifteen were of un- 
doubted New England stock. 

The prominence of New England thus suggested, is to be 
found in almost every part of the political field. Milwaukee has 
furnished four governors of Wisconsin. One of these Ed\rard 
Salomon, is the only German who ever administered the office. 
He was elected lieutenant governor and succeeded to the gover- 
norship on the death of Harvey. Arthur ]\IcArthur, who was 
governor four days, and Wm. E. Smith were Scotchmen, ihe 
fourth, Gov. Geo. W. Peck, is descended from a Connecticut an- 
cestry.' Milwaukee's cosmopolitanism is well illustrated m this 
list. 

Milwaukee's three United States senators, Carpenter, 
Mitchell and Quarles, all represent New England stock. Peter V. 
Deuster, who was elected in 1878, is the only German who has 
been chosen by Milwaukee to the House of Representatives, but 
New England blood had early prominence there, Wm. Pitt 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



016 091 800 7 

Lynde, and the living Nestor of our pioneers, Daniel VV elis, J r., 
having led the way. Mr. Theobald Otjen the present incum- 
bent, was born in Michigan. His father having been a Low 
Dutchman from Oldenburg. Milwaukee has, however, been, 
quite cosmopolitan in her choice of representatives. 

In education, in religious societies, in railway projects, in 
the formation of the charter, in the pioneer business enterprises 
of all sorts, the Yankee was prominent, if not dominant, though- 
since the earlier days he has been numerically at a large disad- 
vantage. 

Such names as Kilbourne, Holton, Colby and Merrill, sug- 
gest the early days of our railway enterprises. 

In the local fields of business Allis, Wells, Chapman, Kel- 
logg, Blair, Bean, Sanderson, Wheelock, Kneeland, Flint, Pal- 
mer, Stowell, Bradley, Merrill, Camp and Bigelow, suggest, 
great things in commercial and financial growth. 

Her early editors were such men as Booth, King, Paul^, 
Benton and Sholes. 

Her bar has been adorned with the names of Arnold, Downer^. 
Carpenter, Tweedy, Upham, Brigham, Carey, Quarles and Vilas- 

The name of Increase A. Lapham, the man who promoted 
the present meteorological signal service of the United States- 
government, is one that is conspicuous upon the pages of Wis- 
consin history, in connection with much modest but highly im- 
portant service to the state. 

Such names as Chase, Wolcott, Weeks, Noyes, Bartlett, Far- 
nam, Copeland and Brown, suggest the early and present medi- 
cal history of the city. 

The first church service (Methodist) is believed to have been 
held in Deacon Enoch Chase's log house in 1835. The pioneer 
Protestant apostle of the state, the Rev. Cutting Marsh of Mass- 
achusetts, and the Eev. Moses Ordway, organized the Presby- 
terian church of which Immanuel church is the successor. Ply- 
mouth was organized in 1841, by the Rev. Otis F. Curtis, and in 
1842, the Unitarian church was organized, the first pastor being- 
the Rev. William Cushing of Cambridge, Mass. It will be- 
found that from those days to the present, New England blood 
has been well represented in church work. 

Old settlers tell me that much of the most refined and de- 
lightful society of early Milwaukee, centered about the group of 
New England families that formed a part of the pioneer settle- 
ment of this city. 

It is not practicable to comprehend an exhaustive array of 
facts, in a brief paper. What I have done may, and I hope will, 
furnish inspiration to some more competent historian, for the 
record of the New England blood, in Milwaukee, is an import- 
ant record of initiative and of devotion to all good and enterpris- 
ing works. It is a record that deserves preservation. 



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